Topic: Gaffed off by Toyota Racing Development for no reason we can think of.
I’m hopping mad, I tell ya!
So this is the deal. We, the Wine O racing Team and the magical 2000 Solara, managed to garner a wonderful little piece of welded trophy at BFE recently for not having engine parts spit out the bottom of the engine more than the other teams of C class. Surfing off of that high we figured what the heck, let’s see if we can mooch some free stuff from the kids at Toyota Racing Development.
Hey, emails don’t cost nuthin’ and we got a smokin’ hot Solara. So there. (Ok, smokin’ hot as far as clapped Solaras go might be more accurate)
To wit, my utter frustration in that these godless employees of a faceless corporation decided to not even acknowledge our transmittal without so much as a curt negative response indicating a polite “thank you, but we aren’t interested at this time, you circus freaks…”. Does the Toyota corporation not take the mighty Lemons audience as serious purchasers of their vehicles? (Note: purchasers, yes, retail price, in-warranty, maybe not so much…) Do the employees of Toyota generally hold all Lemons teams, drivers, and all associated folks in a place of awesome reverence? I would certainly expect so. How can they cower behind the cloak of corporate automobiledom, if automobiledom is , in fact, a word, and be silent?
Maybe it was the way I worded the email. Too terse? Too demanding? Too many comma splices and dangling participles? How would I know? I’m not an English Major! Maybe they’re working on getting some stuff together. I just don’t know!
You be the judge! This is what I sent those rat bastard no-account schmoes:
From: Bill Goebel
Date: September 9, 2014, 2:52:09 PM CDT
Subject: 24 Hours of Lemons Gold...
Attn: TRD Bunch
Dear Messrs. Boler, Kuchta, Wade, Wilson, Brown et al…,
Hello there! We are the Wine O Racing Team based in the Fort Worth Texas area. We are currently running a fine numbers-matching 2000 V-6 Solara in the 24 Hours of Lemons series. (insert cringe here) Our team consists of me, Larry, Dee (Larry’s wife), Lauren (Larry and Dee’s daughter) and my 16 year old son Jake. That’s right about a half female team and the other half not females. Since we started racing this past March we have run at Eagle Canyon Raceway in the DFW area, Sebring (yes, that Sebring!), and High Plains Raceway in Colorado. All of them making it to the checker flag on Sunday afternoon. Jake, with the ink wet on his driver’s license, got best team time at Sebring. Who says Xbox is a waste of time?
This is just a quick note to advise you mopes of our racing team’s recent glorious win at 24 Hours of Lemons BFE GP at High Plains Raceway in Deer Trail Colorado this past weekend. While we didn’t take overall first place (it’s a freakin’ Solara, thank you very much) we were able to squeak away with a Class C win shellacking the nearest competitor by 47-laps. OK, so we weren’t fast. Truth of the matter is that the rest of entire Class C grenaded and we were last car standing. A veritable testament to the reliability of a 240K mile ‘yota. So there. You can use that…
So this is the deal. You schlumps have a fabulous opportunity to cash in on this gold mine of a deal. All you have to do is shower us with free junk that is just sitting around your warehouse collecting dust. If you have any 1MZ-FE 3.0 L V-6 engines or supercharger kits laying around you can send them this way. I mean really who buys that stuff anymore? Accounting probably wants it off the books as well. You have to move all that stuff to Texas as it is (Howdy and a big welcome by the way). Since you’re loading up the truck toss a couple manual transmissions in there too. Great way to save on shipping. Just looking out for you.
Seeing as how you’re being so nice to us we really should reciprocate. It’s just good manners. That’s just the way we are in Texas. So here’s a PR coup served to you on a silver platter. We let you bring one of your fancy pants professional drivers (not a newbie, this car is too nice for some fuzzy cheeked yabo) to Lemons at MSR Houston in November and see what kind of numbers he/she can squeeze from this turnip. No free ride dudes. They’re going to have to cough for their share of expenses and beer and stuff. And if any of those strap-hangers from the home office come with ‘em they better know where the local beer store is. That goes for film crews too. They’re the worst offenders. Know what I mean? Just sayin’…
Now if you want the Toyota logos back on the car that might be a problem because those sort of “fell off” when we were doing the paint job and went out with the recycling. You’re on your own there. Smitty down in the warehouse probably knows the part numbers. Yup, send them with the engines, ‘charger, and the transmissions. . The freight companies are killin’ us these days. Gotta consolidate…
Here’s the poop from last weekend. We were the silver Solara, #47 in its Colorado motif…
http://www.murileemartin.com/UG/LCO14/LBFE14.html
Feel free to pass this to Dave Wilson (El Queso Grande). He should be able to make it easy to deal with any silly paperwork. Again, just trying to watch out for you guys. And Don Brown. He’s somebody there, I think. Hey, I tried to get as many emails off the interweb as I could but that’s getting close to stalking if I dig any deeper. Let’s go places dudes!
Respectfully submitted on behalf of the entire Wine O Racing Team,
Bill "Hard to believe I spun that bitch on turn 5” Goebel
Rhome, Texas
P.S. If you have any guys named Hachirou or Kiyoshi who speak broken english but are whizzes on Solara’s have them stop by the house. We’ll get some Sapporo beer and maybe clear some of these stupid codes…
Response to date? Zip, zero, nada, nothing! Maybe I should send this to Ann Landers. I’ll bet she’ll send us a sticker or an autographed picture or something. Nope. No hard feelings Toyota. We’re way more professional than that.
Bastards….
Chairman Entertainment Committee - Wine O Racing, Pussy Wagon Racing, E-Wreck-Tile Dysfunction Racing
Co-Builder of the world's winningest Toyota Solara SVE